Who is the busiest member of your family? Moms: working at home as well as in office?? Or DADs: having meetings, dropping kids to school, taking grandma to the doctor? Or your 9-10 year old champ, who has a packed schedule from morning till night! School, tuition, karate class or basketball class on weekdays, art class on weekends, homework to finish with, exams to tackle, friends to meet and so on! And somehow in all this, squeezing time to sleep too!! Yes, these school age children are the busiest member of the family. But for this busiest member, suddenly summer holidays have arrived early! That too without giving exams; and these holidays are going to be for long! But, because of the lockdown, we are not able to engage our kids into various outdoor activities like sports, dance, art class etc which we conveniently do in summers!! Because of the lockdown, these children are unable to hang out with their friends and peers! And so, being at home 24*7, sometimes there is friction between parent and child, sometimes they are getting bored and sometimes they are driving us crazy!!!

So it’s a full house!

And it is for this very reason, we are here at Parenting matters: In times of Lockdown to help you out in knowing and understanding   your children better and thus managing them effortlessly!

Children of age group 7-11 years form the part of middle to late childhood. Their physical growth slows down; their gross motor and fine motor skills have developed well by now. However, they show tremendous growth in language, cognitive, social, moral and emotional domains of development. They develop better communication, conversation and narrative skills. They  generally spend more time in social settings like school, playground, art class etc. and hence spend more time with friends than parents!! With peers they are learning to cooperate and work together agreeably and collectively. They start developing their identity! The magical, egocentric  and inflexible thinking found  in less than 6 year old children , is gradually replaced in these school age children  by flexible logical reasoning. They are ready to grasp mathematical concepts of numbers like addition, subtraction, multiplication. They can interpret mass, weight, length etc and develop spatial reasoning thus understanding  geographical directions too. They are able to classify and categorise things, situations and ideas by focusing on several aspects of a problem and this helps them in problem solving and getting organised.  

Thus as we see these children are on  a journey of tremendous growth in different domains of development; hence, while engaging them at home and letting them strike off their boredom, parents should focus on 8 areas.

1. Have a schedule: Even though these are holidays, have a schedule for your child. Since, there are no schools or activity classes to keep them busy, lack of a timetable is likely to increase unproductive activities like watching TV, sulking because of boredom and snacking food! Sit down with your child, and make a schedule for the next day. Make schedules on a daily basis. Include regular bedtime and waking time; time for screen, time for reading, physical activity etc.  Schedules bring discipline, increase productivity and promote better utilisation of time. 

2. Eating habits: Many children have a habit of communicating their boredom by telling their moms every few hours- that they are hungry! And want something to eat or drink. Staying indoors, reduced opportunity of physical activity and boredom is likely to increase calorie consumption of these children. It becomes difficult for parents also to fulfil the demands by cooking something or the other. Thus, in such scenarios it is likely that we as parents take the aid of packaged food items or ready to eat food items like Chocos, biscuits, chips,  fries, Maggi, just fry , frozen desserts etc. These lead to increased consumption of HFSS- i.e high fat, high sugar and high salt containing food items !

Therefore, some rules regarding eating habits should be followed at home:

• No eating in front of the screen or rather no eating while viewing TV/mobile/video games
• Involve your child whether a girl or a boy,  in the preparations of at least one meal of the day. You can start with evening snacks and non fire cooking. This is a chance to teach your child various measurements in cooking, making understand serving portions and demonstrate applied science too.
• Ensure that  in the diet of your child, there are at least 2 servings of fruits and at least 5 servings of vegetables in 24 hours of a day; where one serving is equal to ½ cup.
• Make food items aesthetically attractive, thus increasing the interest of your child in the food. Have at least one meal together.
• Replace highly processed foodstuffs with less processed or home-made options.
• Limit sugary drinks, sweets, fatty meats and salty or highly processed foods
• Ensure adequate water intake, i.e. at least 2 to 2.5 litres of water per day.

3. Screen time: Holidays and especially this lockdown have led to increased screen time. However, as per American Academy of Paediatrics guidelines, for school age children i.e. 6-11 years of age, not more than 1.5-2 hours of screen time is recommended per day. The content should be non violent and should be monitored by parents. Passive screen time is always more harmful than active, adult directed screen time.  Use screen time as a reward so that ‘earned screen time’ is used efficiently.  Ensure that screen time doesn’t compromise the sleep and physical activity of the child. Also, behaviour of the child should be watched for, since excessive screen time can lead to hyperactivity, inattention, irritability and sleep issues. Ensure no screens during meals, no screens in bedroom and no screen 1 hour prior to sleeping time.

4. Physical activity: At least 1 hour of physical activity is recommended for these school children. Engage them in your own work out, power yoga sessions etc. Nothing like sharing the joy of exercise with your children.  Here, you are modelling good habits too by setting an example.

5. Reading time: If your child has already been bitten by the reading bug, you can make your child’s reading time interesting by giving him/her assignments like finding 10 adjectives, finding 10 nouns, searching about the cities/places mentioned in the child’s story book. This age group of children are ready to explore science principles, geographical places, chronology of historical events; Expose them to such kind of books and make small small projects with your child on these topics. Do simple science experiments, make a map of your locality or route from home to school, discuss about the family tree of various dynasties and so on! Amar Chitra Katha has loads of issues based on historical and mythological characters. Similarly Tell me why, Nat Geo kids, Wisdom and many other magazines  provide the material needed for these absorptive brains! Make reading pleasurable by associating it with art and craft; make bookmarks for the books, Make a cartoon strip or a picture book with your child.

If your child hasn’t developed the habit of reading, you can start it now. Start with 15 mins per day; just 1 small story a day or 2 pages per day. But start. Read with your child, read to your child, reading together ensures that the reading time is not missed. Set goals for reading, like finishing together a book over a week or so! Reading actually reduces stress, improves memory, focus and concentration and induces better sleep. It increases vocabulary, improves communication and writing skills too.

However, many homes support their child’s not reading during summer with the reasoning that the child has to read so much in school days. But, this taking a break from reading leads to serious summer learning loss that can negatively impact long term academic achievement. This is called as SUMMER SLIDE. Students who read during the summer gain an average of 1 month of reading proficiency. Students who don’t read lose an average of 2-3 months proficiency and over time, those lost months add up to years. By high school, 2/3 of the reading achievement gap can be attributed to summer learning loss during the primary school years. Also, starting each new school year, teachers have to spend an average of 4-6 weeks of re-teaching the forgotten skills and materials! Hence, we have to make a wise choice by choosing reading over SUMMER SLIDE.

Thus, reading is a must. Ensure your child reads-read newspapers, comics, children magazines, story books, history , mythology and so on. There are lot many options out there.

6. Hobbies: Yes, this is the time to develop hobbies. Utilize your child’s leisure time in developing skills in art, craft, cooking, gardening, making scrapbook about interesting facts, music etc. See what interests your child. Availability of internet has made pursuing one’s hobbies much easier. There are tutorials for everything under the sun. All you have to do is search! Internet has also promoted the concept of ‘Do It Yourself- DIY’ and thus we are heading towards self learning rather than spoon feeding!!

7. Responsibilities and habits: This time of lockdown or rather holidays can be an opportunity to give your child household responsibilities and help in developing self esteem and feeling of competency. Household tasks like filling up the bottles, serving plates for dinner, sorting the laundry, cleaning and decorating a corner of the house etc can help in making your child a responsible individual. Giving the responsibility of taking care of one plant, observing how it  grows, will not only introduce science to your child but will also stimulate emotional development.  Developing habit of making the bed, organising the wardrobe make the children more organised. Use rewards and token economy for reinforcing these habits and responsibilities.

8. Siblings relationships: Families where there are siblings, can either have moments of cooperation and affection between the siblings or some moments of pity fights and quarrels leading to some amount of sibling rivalry. It is essential to maintain a balance between both. Hence, ensure that both children are given adequate attention. Both are praised for their strengths, target weaknesses individually and avoid comparisons! Engage in an activity which involves siblings together. Give them collective responsibilities as a team. This shall further develop skills of working in team cooperatively; evolving the family bond too!

So, in a nutshell,  during this lockdown, for your child have a schedule , monitor eating and screen time, stick to reading time, give at least 1 hour of physical activity, nurture the hobbies, develop habits and give responsibilities and utilise resources by making siblings a good team!!!

I hope, the information shared in today’s blog shall be useful to the parents of school age children (7-11 years) . . This blog is also available as a podcast on KUKU FM . the link for podcast is http://applinks.kukufm.com/KosAHHaNWx4PdfZ48

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(The author is a Developmental Paediatrician and deals with development and behavioural issues of children.)